Get to the point.

[00:00:00] You're listening to the Daily Five, an experimental podcast by Aurooba, where I talk about something for five minutes. So let's get to it, shall we? By the time I graduated from high school, the essay writing formula was drilled into my head and I could turn out a solid essay using it very quickly. My teachers had taught me to choose a thesis,

[00:00:27] come up with three arguments that support it and write a paragraph each. And the introduction and conclusion should connect the thesis to the vast human condition to make it more relatable. Yeah, that's something we actually used to have to add as the very first sentence of the introduction. So you'd see a lot of essays that started with something like, "In all of human history..."

[00:00:52] And yes, when I say that in my head, I hear it in Nicholas Cage's voice. Then I went to university and took my first university level English class, and the very first thing my professor did was crap all over that entire formula. Well, maybe not all over it, but definitely over the idea that you had to connect your thesis to the grand human condition.

[00:01:17] He positively laughed at it. In fact, I think he spent the first 90 minutes berating our high school teachers on that very topic. My English professor, and later my philosophy professor taught me something that I took to heart very strongly: get to the point and make it effectively; zero in on your argument and then argue for it specifically.

[00:01:40] There is a time and place for broad topics, a time and a place for meandering long tail connections. That time and place is usually not an essay. maybe a long fiction book, maybe a complicated series of books, but even within those long meandering topics, you have to be focused. Every word you use is precious and should serve a purpose.

[00:02:03] Cut the filler out. The business of long sentences and complicated vocabulary is ridiculous. Use the simplest words you can to effectively illustrate your point. Yes, in technical or highly academic situations, the simplest vocabulary may not in fact be simple, but complexity for the sake of complexity?

[00:02:25] Complexity for the sake of appearing fancy? We're all far too busy for that, especially when the average attention span is under nine seconds. And yes, I had to Google that. This also brings me back to yesterday's episode where we talked about how your first draft is never your best work. Sometimes when you're creating a piece of content,

[00:02:45] you don't know exactly what you wanna say until you've said something. We don't always begin work knowing exactly what we wanna do and how we wanna say it. It often takes shape only as we start to do it, and that's why we should do our best to do more than just first draft work ,so we can present a more focused and razor sharp message.

[00:03:09] I've been drafting the lessons of the small course I've been working on. And while I won't say word for word everything I'm writing down, it's been really helpful to script what I say because I'm covering some fairly complex and technical topics. Writing it down has helped me get my thoughts in order, and I often find myself reading it back and then reordering the flow of information to make it work better.

[00:03:34] Other times, I realize that an entire paragraph is actually useless. It was just instrumental in writing the paragraph that came next, where the real nuggets were. In my case, one of the most important things I do when writing these lessons is stay within a certain word limit. In this case, I'm making sure no one lesson is longer than a thousand words, because I wanna make sure each lesson is under 10 minutes on average, to keep it by size and approachable.

[00:04:05] So I'm constantly trimming words and rephrasing to stay under that limit. And almost always the revised version is tighter, more focused, and more to the point. And it's been really, really nice to not only just write it all out, but give myself enough time to be able to revise. So when you're writing, speaking, or communicating in some way,

[00:04:33] remember that getting to the point as effectively as possible IS the point. Trying to make your point as widely relatable as possible? Mm, not so much.

[00:04:45] Thanks for listening. Talk to you tomorrow.